


Armistice

by Dassandre



Series: Word of the Day Fics [7]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Character Death, Drug Use, Idiots in Love, M/M, Mental Anguish, Too Damn Loud, Violence, character injury, of a sort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 20:56:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16668160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: James had seen hurricanes leave behind less damage than what greeted him when he rounded the corner.





	Armistice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts).



“Q!”  His lover’s name broke past his lips at the same time James burst through the door of their townhome. Two by two, he raced up the stairs from the ground floor to the living level.  

“Q!?”  The sitting room was empty.  Coffee table overturned, a mug of spilt tea seeping into the area rug upon which it sat.  Throw pillows … thrown. Cats in hiding. “Alec?!” He called out.

“Kitchen!”  Alec called out from the back of the house.  He sounded exhausted.

Alec had good cause.

“Bugger me.”  

James had seen hurricanes leave behind less damage than what greeted him when he rounded the corner.  The kitchen was in a shambles. The stools from the island were on their sides. Every cupboard was open and empty, their contents littering the worktops and the floor.  Flour and sugar for Q’s baking spilt from their bags onto the tile. The tinned soups and pasta and pot noodles they ate when too tired to actually cook were scattered about.  The French doors to the fridge dangled open, its glass shelves ripped from the inside, fresh fruits and veg and packaged takeaway scattered at its base, semi-skimmed milk for tea dripping from its punctured container.

Every bit of crockery they had, shattered into pieces on the tile floor.

Against the rear wall, at the base of the sink, sat Alec with their barely conscious lover in his arms.

Q’s back rested against Alec’s broad chest, face pressed against the crook of his neck.  Alec’s arms and legs were wrapped tightly around the boffin; he had trapped Q’s hands beneath his armpits.

James’ Oxfords kicked larger pieces of crockery out of the way, crushed some of the smaller bits still further.  He sunk into a crouch in front of his lovers.

“Came as soon as I heard about Francheska.”  He’d been trapped in his post-mission eval with Psych and hadn’t got the news until he was finished.  James wrapped a hand around one of Q’s slim ankles, more to ground himself than anything. With all the shards about, he was thankful that Q was wearing slippers.

“He’d already started in on the crockery by the time I got here,” Alec said.  He kept his voice pitched low so as not to rouse the man in his arms any more than necessary just yet.  The look he levelled on James was equal parts understanding, acceptance, and worry, and James was pretty sure his own expression echoed it.

Q had been riding the edge of his endurance for days, possibly weeks now.  Long, stressful hours at work -- Ministry and budgetary pressures in addition to several high-value, critical missions running at the same time -- coupled with what each agent was certain was limited sleep at home when Q had finally returned there, _alone_.  Yes, they’d each been out on assignment and so couldn’t know for certain -- Alec had returned two days ago, James only the night before -- but they knew Q’s habits as well as he knew theirs.  

On the whole, Q compartmentalised better than either of his lovers, but every so often, the walls of those compartments thinned and the pressures and the demons and the sheer weight of his responsibilities leeched out and overran his mind, unbalancing the precise measures Q took to keep it all under control.

From the look of the kitchen, he had lost that control.

Whilst both Alec’s and James’ missions had resulted in their objectives accomplished with no casualties along the way, such was not the case for 002’s.  A week ago, in order to aid his agent in the field -- things had gone pear-shaped when Two decided to still trust an old informant though she had been deemed unreliable by more credible sources -- Q had been compelled to remotely trigger a natural gas explosion to destroy a small but notable bioweapon facility operating outside Tarsus.  That it was situated next to a refugee camp was … unfortunate. The twenty-two civilian casualties were noted in the AAR. Q sequestered himself in his office for three hours, turning away all visitors, until it was time for him to start Alec on the final leg of his op in Baku.

Three days ago, Dia, one of Q’s R&D minions, was critically injured when the small explosive payload she was handling triggered in her hands.  Medical was very tight-lipped on her prognosis. Despite Q’s assurances that he’d take care of completing the small range, belt buckle bomb as soon as he was done creating the computer virus for 005’s upcoming mission, she had nevertheless taken on the task to ease the burden on her overworked Quartermaster.

Dia may never have the use of her hands again.

It was to a warm, grateful, but atypically quiet and melancholy lover that Alec returned to the next night.

Q was even more withdrawn by the time James got back.

And now 008 was dead.

The mission had been fraught with fuckups from practically the moment Frannie touched down in Jamaica.  Everyone from M to Q to Francheska had known the intel upon which the operation was based was sketchy to begin with, but the wealth of information her mark could provide regarding terrorist cells across Europe was deemed priceless.  And Frannie was eager to try.

It, of course, was too good to be true.

Q almost got her out.  Two more right-hand turns, out past a handful of guards she could easily handle, and 008 would have been in the clear.

But Frannie thought she saw something Q hadn’t accounted for.  She ignored his instructions, dismissed his orders, and took matters into her own hands.

Left was a more direct route in terms of distance, but when that patch of ground is under view of a sniper’s scope ...

The last sound in Q’s ear was that of Francheska’s head exploding.

This wasn’t the first time Q’s mental strain had ultimately sought a physical release.  It had happened thrice before. The first time was early in their relationship when the three of them were still figuring out their dynamic as lovers, partners … family.

The damage hadn’t been quite so extensive but Alec and James hadn’t known what to do.  When Q had come back to himself, horrified by his actions and ready to move out thinking Alec and James would want to see the back end of someone so unbalanced, the three men had come up with a plan of sorts, to help Q quiet his mind in these extreme instances until he could rebuild and reconstruct the walls he needed to function as Quartermaster.

“James …”

At the sound of his name, James looked up from his study of the fine bones in Q’s ankle into the tear-reddened eyes of the man himself.  His hair was a riot. His glasses were ... somewhere. The muscles in Alec’s arms tensed, ready should Q begin to struggle again.

“Why didn’t they listen?”  Q’s voice was weary, his soul, for now, even more so.

Two.  Dia. Frannie.  

Not one of them had listened to him.

“Why can’t people just _listen_ to each other.”

James knew Q wasn’t talking about Two and Dia and Frannie anymore.

“I don’t know, love.”  He cupped Q’s cheek in his open palm.  “I don’t know.”

“Is it still loud?” Alec asked, nudging Q’s temple with his nose.  Such a violent outburst didn’t always quieten the boffin’s mind.

Q groaned as if in physical pain.  “Deafening. Too many questions. No answers.”

“James …” Alec said, nodding at the ceiling and the locked cabinet in the loo directly above them.

“On it.”

By the time James returned, Alec had Q settled on the wide sofa in the sitting room.    His head was in Alec’s lap, and Alec’s wide fingers carded through Q’s hair. His body was practically rigid with his mental anguish.

James sat down on top of the righted coffee table and swabbed the crook of Q’s elbow with the alcohol-soaked square he had torn from its packaging.  Senses clearly in overdrive, Q hissed at the cold contact and jerked away but Alec arrested his escape with a strong forearm across his chest.

“Tell us if you don’t want this, Q,” Alec said, firmly.  

“No.  Do it.  I can’t answer … no more questions,” he said of the thoughts in his head. He tugged violently at his curls before Alec twined their fingers together and pressed Q’s arm back to the cushion.  He nodded at James who had backed off when Q flinched.

James pulled off the cap of the syringe with his teeth and with a light grip on Q’s thin wrist to hold things steady, slowly injected the powerful sedative into his arm.  Its effect was immediate, the tension in Q’s body eased and between one heartbeat and the next, he was asleep, a strong, dreamless sleep where Q’s mind could escape the noise and heal.  An armistice between him and the pressures and the demons and the sheer weight of his responsibilities. A temporary cease-fire with the uncontrolled noise of life until Q regained the strength to silence it all at a thought.

James capped the syringe and set it on the surface of the table before sliding onto the sofa.  He pulled Q’s legs on top of his own and rested a hand on Q’s upper thigh. A moment later, Alec’s free hand brushed up against his and settled next to it, touching but not touching.  Support in the silence.

Q’d be sacked in a heartbeat if M knew about this method of regaining control.  Hell, he’d be sacked if M knew Q was capable of losing control like this: pressure points and security risks and all that.

But Alec and James would keep his secret.

They would keep it, just as he always kept theirs.

 

 

* * *

  
  
  
**Armistice** :  a temporary suspension of hostilities by agreement of the warring parties; truce  
  
  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you think.


End file.
